


sweet birthday baby

by pinkbelle



Series: to be where you are [5]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers Family, Gen, Peter Parker is Pepper Pott's Biological child, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 06:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkbelle/pseuds/pinkbelle
Summary: Peter's birthdays in moments, from one to seventeen.





	sweet birthday baby

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So, this isn't the work I was planning on posting but this inspiration hit me HARD a couple of days ago, so here we are. As always - unbetaed, all mistakes are my sleep-deprived own...let me know if you spot any? Part of the series, not necessary to read all of them but a couple of things might make more sense if you do. I love hearing from you guys, so please leave me a note if you enjoyed this, and also if you have any prompts for me for this series! Also, credit for Aunt Nat's hot cocoa goes 100% to Isnt_it_pretty_to_think_so and their story Hot Chocolate, which you should go read.

-1- 

 

The public thinks that they know enough about Tony Stark to guess that his son is going to have some lavish, extravagant first birthday party. There’s speculation as to where it’s going to be held, who might go, how much the eccentric billionaire will spend. When the day rolls around – and there are only guesses as to Peter’s actual birthday since it was never publically released – and there’s no news around it the furore and interest dies down.

On Peter’s birthday he and his dad play with a set of blocks his Uncle Rhodey’s mom sent him. His mom reads him his favorite book, and he babbles along with her, and the three of them have a piece of the (slightly lopsided) cake his mom and dad had made him. At the end of the day he is put to bed by both of his parents and feels safe and loved.

(When Happy later sees the pictures and is a little indignant that he didn’t get to see Peter on his birthday Rhodey gives him the full story of Howard Stark, the one Tony has never acknowledged outside of a passing comment. Rhodey tells him that Tony’s biggest fear when Pepper got pregnant had been becoming his father and not giving enough affection to his son, but the look on his friend’s face in the pictures is proof enough for Happy that it isn’t a possibility.)

 

-2-

 

Peter’s second birthday isn’t too different from his first, except this time his Uncle Happy is there with a stuffed Winnie the Pooh the size of compact car. His dad tries describing it to his Uncle Rhodey when he calls in from the base he is currently deployed to but can’t get through a sentence without laughing at the sight of the thing, and his mom is trying to be serious about where the stupid thing is going to live but she keeps smiling. Peter is in love with it, able to snuggle himself against it and it’s like getting a real hug from Pooh Bear…it proceeds to live in his bedroom until he’s eight years old and decidedly reassigns it to another bedroom.

 

-3-

 

Peter’s third birthday involves his Uncle Rhodey taking shifts with his Uncle Happy to be with his parents as they sit beside his crib in the PICU in Cedars Sinai. When Peter gets a little older and asks about there aren’t any pictures of his third birthday his dad gets really quiet, and its only when he gets in trouble when he’s fourteen that he learns why his dad still gets a little pale whenever he goes near the roadster in his workshop.

 

-4-

 

When Peter turns four he’s sleeping in his parent’s bed, as he has done every night since his Uncle Rhodey sat down and told him his dad wouldn’t be coming home for a while. His mom holds him really tight when he says that, and Peter thinks that this means it isn’t like when he and daddy play hide and seek. She lets him sleep with her that night which he isn’t allowed to do, since he has a big boy bed and all, but then he keeps doing it and she doesn’t tell him to go back to his bed like she usually does. He knows that his mommy is sad, he is too, but he also knows that when his daddy comes home he’ll make it better. The week before Peter’s birthday Uncle Happy sits down with him and tells him that Uncle Rhodey has been looking really hard for his daddy, but  he might not be back for his birthday. Peter doesn’t have a party that year – instead, his mommy makes a cake, and she makes his favorite noodles for dinner. Uncle Happy is there, and before he goes to bed Uncle Rhodey calls to tell him Happy Birthday. Mommy doesn’t ask him what he wishes for when he blows out the candles – he thinks she knows he wishes for daddy to come home anyway.

His fourth birthday is a little sad, but two weeks later he’s standing in an airport holding his mommy’s hand and watching his daddy get off a plane – he’s a little different, but he came home like Peter knew he would.

 

-5-

 

Peter thinks that his daddy feels guilty about not being there for his birthday last year, so his fifth birthday ends up being a little crazy. There’s a big party with all of his friends from preschool, his Uncle Happy is really grumpy because there’s too much noise, and his Uncle Rhodey took the day off and is there in his uniform which is _so cool_. Peter gets what he’d asked for, his first real Lego set, and a backpack with Captain America on it from Uncle Rhodey. His dad makes a face when he opens that gift but Peter know he’s going to be the coolest kid in Kindergarten with it…his dad pretends he doesn’t like Captain America but he still read Peter the comic books about his adventures with his friend. There’s an ice cream cake, the fire department are called when his dad uses Iron Man to set off fireworks, and one of the policemen that asks them to leave Griffith Park gives Peter an LAPD sticker which is pretty cool. He sticks it on his new backpack.

 

-6-

 

Peter’s sixth birthday comes not long after the accident with the Stark Expo. His mom and dad had spent a lot of time fighting afterwards, his mom kept yelling about keeping secrets after they thought Peter was asleep, but they’ve stopped fighting and everything is normal again, except they’ve moved to New York and live in a big tower with their last name on it.

On his birthday his party is _much_ smaller than last year, not a single police officer or fireman comes, and a new addition is his mom’s work friend Natasha. He thought her name was something different, but that’s what everyone seems to call her now. His dad gives her the stink eye sometimes but she doesn’t seem to care. They have lunch at one of the cafes in Central Park and she brings him a little bow and arrow set. She tells him that her best friend loves his, and Peter reminds her of him. Peter thinks about how cool Natasha is and so her friend must be pretty cool too – he takes it as a compliment. She helps him figure out how to notch one of the plastic arrows with the foam head and shoot it, knocking his dad’s empty coffee up off of the table. His mom shakes her head with a smile while his dad complains to her about the unfairness of how “the Russian spy can give him an archery set but he isn’t allowed to give his own son a prototype wrist repulsor”. They have cake in the park, Uncle Rhodey brought it with him from a bakery near the book store his mom took his to last week, and even though he gets in trouble for breaking a picture frame with his new toy he thinks it ends up being an awesome birthday.

 

-7-

 

When Peter turns seven he realises it’s a weird birthday – it’s the last one he’ll have where it’s just him, his mom and his dad. His mom is having a baby – she and his dad had told him about it after Christmas, and he wishes he could go back and take back his question about how the baby got there. Around Easter his dad had taken him down to the workshop to talk about being a big brother, and how important it was that Peter look out for his new little sister when she got there. His new friend Ned had told Peter that having a brother or sister was the worst, but when his daddy was telling him about how important he was going to be for the new baby he decided he was going to be a good big brother.

When Peter gets to the kitchen the morning of his birthday his mom is making her special pancakes, and she can’t really hug him the same anymore because the baby gets in the way but she gives him a big kiss. He puts a hand on her big tummy and feels a little push against it.

His mom smiles. “That’s your little sister saying Happy Birthday, sweetie.” He already likes the new baby a lot.

After breakfast his dad takes him to see _Cars 2_ , he has a party with some of his friends in the afternoon where they play in an arcade, and when he goes home for dinner he finds his Aunt Natasha talking to Uncle Rhodey and setting the table. She smiles when she sees him and gives him a really big hug, asking about his day. The first time he’d called her Aunt Natasha his dad had choked on his coffee but Peter had decided that she was his family, and she’d smiled wider than he’d ever seen. 

Over dinner his parents look at each other and then at him, and his mom brushes his hair back gently. They tell him that as an almost-grown up (he is seven, after all) they’ve given him a really important job – choosing Morgan’s middle name. He nods seriously and accepts the task.

(When he comes back to his parents a few days later and tells them he’s chosen Jane, because JARVIS isn’t a girl’s name, they seem a little stunned but then his dad grins and tells him that’s a great choice. Morgan Jane Stark is born a little over a week later.)

 

-8-

 

On his eighth birthday Peter wakes up early and, instead of going into his parents room like he usually does, he tiptoes past their door and sneaks into the nursery. He isn’t sure why he’s trying to be so sneaky about it, he’s always allowed in here (as long as he doesn’t wake Morgan up when she’s sleeping), but this feels like a moment that should be just the two of them without mom and or dad. When he gets to the crib Morgan’s wide eyes are blinking at him curiously. He sits down beside the bars and reaches a finger between them, and his baby sister immediately takes a hold of it.

“It’s my birthday today,” he whispers, leaning his head against the wooden crib and looking at the baby, “I’m eight years old today. I’m almost a grown up, and I wanted to make sure you knew I’m gonna look out for you.” 

Morgan coos in response, and Peter smiles. “I wanted a baby sister, and I’m really glad I got you.”

As Peter continues to have a one-sided whispered conversation with his sister his dad is hovering outside of the door with tears in his eyes, not that he’d ever admit that. He listens to his son tell his sister about everything and nothing and wonders, not for the first time, how he got this damn lucky.

 

-9-

 

 

Peter’s ninth birthday is spent with family like always, but the family is bigger than last year – before his party Steve is the one blowing up balloons, Clint is helping his mom set up the table, Bruce is flipping through the books he’d gotten Peter with his dad and Natasha is helping him figure out how to use the new Nerf bow and arrow Clint had bought him to replace the one he got a couple of years ago with Morgan in her arms. Eventually the kids will come and the others will leave just before that, but in the meantime Peter laughs with Natasha as one of the foam arrows hits Steve in the back of the head. Clint laughs so hard at the stunned look on Steve’s face that the super solider responds by tossing the plastic-tipped arrow back at him.

 

-10-

 

For his tenth birthday Peter’s mom is working, and she’s honestly more upset about it than he is. She cries as she tells him she has to go to work during the day but will be back by dinner time she _promises_ , and he shrugs and tells her he’s going to be at summer camp anyway so he’s not sure why she’s upset. His dad places a hand on his shoulder as his mom leaves and just says one word fondly: “women”. When Peter looks up at him with a cocked brow his dad laughs and ruffles his hair, promising he’ll understand when he’s older. Peter’s getting tired of that response, he’s ten and thinks that’s plenty old enough. His Aunt Nat is sitting at the breakfast bar reading a paper when he walks in and she gives him a smile that he never sees her give anyone else (except Morgan, but he’s okay with that) – he knows people are really mad at her for something that she did, but he doesn’t care because his aunt is the best. She sets a mug of her special hot chocolate in front of him when he sits down and he sips it and watches while his dad complains about not getting one and his aunt answers back in Russian which drives Tony _nuts_. He laughs, and eventually his dad takes him to day camp where Ned gives him the most awesome Lego set _featuring his actual dad_ , and when he comes home from camp for dinner his mom is there with his dad and Morgan, Uncle Rhodey, Aunt Nat and Uncle Bruce, and ten turns out to be pretty good.

 

-11-

 

Peter is so excited to start his new school in August that he honestly kind of forgets about his birthday. He’s going to a science school that feeds into Midtown Science and Technology, and his summer has been spent pouring over books with his dad and Uncle Bruce. His uncle has spent the better part of the last year living in the tower and he works on a bunch of stuff that his dad doesn’t – while his dad is all about engineering, Uncle Bruce is a biology specialist which is really cool. He helps Peter understand human biology and evens tells him about some of the new stuff he’s working on in his part of dad’s lab. His dad pretends to be jealous but Peter knows that he’s really happy he likes Uncle Bruce (although he is definitely more popular with Morgan who absolutely adores him and makes him play tea party with her and her beloved stuffed Hulk). A couple of days before his birthday his mom reminds him to decide what he wants to have for dinner when Ned comes over. This year on his actual birthday it will just be his parents, Morgan and Ned, since Uncle Bruce has to go to a conference and everyone else is on different SHIELD and Air Force jobs, and Peter decided he just wanted Ned to come over so they could finish the Millennium Falcon Lego set they started last week. The morning of his birthday he opens cards and gifts from everyone (his dad immediately confiscating the throwing stars from Natasha) and when Ned arrives he decides that being eleven means being a better brother and lets Morgan come help with the Lego (he isn’t too sad when she gets bored and leaves after ten minutes, though). His cake is shaped like the arc reactor per his request, even though his dad doesn’t have it anymore, and he goes to bed excited about everything he’s going to do while he’s eleven.

 

-12-

 

The week before his twelfth birthday Peter and his dad go to stay on Uncle Clint’s farm while Laura takes Lila and Nathanial to the city to stay with mom and Morgan. On the morning of his birthday Uncle Clint makes the best french toast Peter has ever had, and he and Cooper run around outside with the laser guns he gave Cooper for his birthday earlier that year. They make burgers for lunch – Uncle Clint tells his dad, for the tenth time, that no thank you, he doesn’t need his grill to be upgraded, could he please step away from the propane tank (Uncle Clint uses more expletives that Peter knows will get him in trouble even on his birthday) – and Aunt Nat video chats with them in the afternoon. He talks to his mom and Morgan, and around four o’clock his dad makes root beer floats and they watch the first episode of Star Wars (his dad refuses to acknowledge the existence of the prequels and classifies New Hope as the first movie…Peter saw the other three that summer with Ned and is inclined to agree). It’s his first birthday out of the city and away from his mom, but watching his dad joke around with Uncle Clint and playing games with Cooper is really fun, and his dad seems more relaxed than he’s seen in a long time.

 

-13-

 

The day Peter turns thirteen is hard. The Avengers are fighting insurgents in Latveria and the ones left behind are trying to pretend that they’re not eyeing their phones constantly for news. The longest the team has been on one mission had been one of the last Hydra bases over a year ago, and the gaping hole in Steve’s side had been the reason it took so long…Peter had been really scared seeing his Uncle Steve, _the_ Steve Rogers, laid up in the med bay. They haven’t heard from his dad, or anyone, in more than two days, and Peter can tell that his mom is trying to keep it together for him and Morgan but she’s scared. Uncle Rhodey had put in for family leave when the team had left and has been helping get him and Morg to school and everything, but he knows everyone is nervous. His mom makes his favorite cake and Morgan gives him a card with the two of them drawn on the front, but the thing that makes it a great birthday is his dad coming in to his room when he gets home at two o’clock the next morning. He looks a little bruised and really tired, but he sits next to Peter as he asks how it feels to be a teenager and Peter doesn’t care that he’s snuggled into his dad’s side like a baby because he’s just really glad he’s home.

 

-14-

 

Fourteen, Peter feels, is one of those weird birthdays that don’t matter a whole lot – thirteen is a big one, and so is sixteen, but fourteen and fifteen are just kind of _eh_. When he says that to Uncle Rhodey he laughs and shakes his head, asking him when he grew up so fast. His mom and dad let him spend the day ‘training’ with his Uncle Steve, and Sam lets him try out his drone. He video chats over an encrypted line with Uncle Clint and Aunt Nat while they’re somewhere Classified™, and everyone has dinner together that night. His mom makes an exception “just this once” for him to ride his new skateboard inside, and the tumble he takes at the end of the tiled hallway is so worth the privilege, even as Morgan giggles and helps their mom put a band aid on his grazed knee. His knees are healed by the time the morning of his Oscorp field trip comes around when school starts up a couple of weeks later.

 

-15-

 

Fifteen, as far as Peter’s concerned, can fuck itself. His mom spends weeks asking him what he wants to do for his birthday and he answers consistently with a belligerent “nothing” until finally a week ago she’d thrown her hands up and told him he can’t do _nothing_ for his birthday. His dad had spoken up at that moment from his position at the coffee table where he was coloring with Morgan, telling his mom that if he didn’t want to do anything it was his choice. Morgan had nodded wisely before shoving a purple crayon into their dad’s hand, and their mom had sighed in exasperation before agreeing.

A card comes in the mail for Peter and he knows who it’s from the second he sees the handwriting on the front – it goes straight into the shredder in his dad’s office. It’s like a cosmic joke when another card comes a couple days later with a message written on the back of the envelope – ‘don’t shred’. Fucking Clint. He hands the envelope straight to his Aunt Nat and asks her to get him to fuck off, in those words exactly. He’s angry, so angry he doesn’t know how to _stop_ being angry, and he thinks she understands because she doesn’t reprimand him for cursing. The envelopes stop coming.

His birthday is spent helping his Uncle Rhodey with physical therapy in the morning, playing outside with Morgan after lunch, and pretending not to notice the crushing emptiness of their table at dinner time before he goes out as Spider-Man.

 

-16-

 

For as much of a shit storm that fifteen was, sixteen doesn’t start off a lot better as he stumbles into his room at three in the morning with a stab wound. His fingers are clumsily trying to stop the warm flow of blood pouring from his side, and when the light in his room comes on and his dad stumbles in and shouts his name he knows it isn’t good. He feels like he’s going to hit the floor but suddenly he’s in his dad’s arms looking at the ceiling lights in the hallway. Morgan starts screaming and his mom instructs her to go back to bed, _now_. He closes his eyes, just for a minute, and when he opens them again he’s no longer staring at the scared expression on his dad’s face but a different one of worry on Uncle Bruce’s. Belated realisation shows that he’s in medical, his eyes must have been closed for longer than he’d thought. Turning his head to the side slightly he can see his mom standing with a hand over her mouth while his Uncle Steve is trying to comfort her with an arm around her shoulders…he turns his head the to the other side slowly and sees his dad handing his Uncle Bruce things from a tray beside the gurney. He wants to say something but then he feels a sharp prick in his arm and his eyes start to close.

When his eyes open next he’s in his bedroom, he can tell immediately that he’s in his bedroom and not in medical – he stretches his legs out and doesn’t run out of mattress, a dead give-away that he isn’t in one of the single beds in the medical wing. The next indicator is the red-headed presence pressed against his non-stabbed side, wrapped up in purple sheets. Morgan sniffs in her sleep and Peter raises a hand to clumsily stroke her hair. He sees that she’s placed her treasured teddy Hulk on his stabbed side and he blames the fact that he tears up on whatever pain killers Uncle Bruce put him on that have his head still feeling fuzzy. Through bleary-eyed surveillance of the rest of his room he can see the evidence of Avengers coming and going – there’s an arrow lying abandoned on the top of his dresser, a dog-eared first edition Fitzgerald novel on his nightstand and almost a dozen coffee cups littered across the surfaces. The chair that is usually at his desk in currently next to his bed, and his mom is sitting in it with a tablet in her hands. He makes a soft noise with his throat and she drops the tech down on the floor immediately.

“Hi baby,” she whispers, softly pushing his matted hair back off of his forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Sore,” he rasps, only just noticing the parched dryness of his throat. 

She kisses his forehead and leaves the room, coming back a few moments later with a glass of water and his dad. Tony bends down and rests his forehead and Peter’s, sighing. 

“No more holes in my kid, please.” His dad says it as a joke, but the underlying plea of Peter being more careful is clear.

Morgan groans at the noise and yanks her covers over her head. Their father chuckles and wraps an arm around the pile of purple comforter, lifting the little girl into his arms. Her head pokes out from the duvet and as Tony walks towards the door to take her back to her room she shouts “happy birthday!” over his shoulder. Peter grins sleepily in response. 

Peter’s sixteenth birthday is spent recovering from a stab wound – there’s no party, no restaurant. Instead, his dad helps him to the couch in the living room where everyone gathers to watch movies and eat pizza his Uncle Clint goes to get from his favorite place in the East Village. His mom and Aunt Nat bring out the birthday cake his Uncle Steve made, he opens a couple of gifts and ends up in bed and asleep before nine o’clock at night.

Before he drifts off, his mom sitting on the edge of his bed and gently carding her hands through his hair soothingly, he thinks about how much he hated his birthday last year. Even though he got, you know, _stabbed_ , this birthday is considerably better than his last and home now feels a lot less empty.

 

-17-

 

On what would have been Peter’s seventeenth birthday Tony sits in his son’s room and screams. He screams until his throat is raw, until it feels like its bleeding; he screams until he no longer feels like his grief is going to kill him where he stands. When he finishes screaming he clutches his head in his hands and cries for the part of his heart that had disappeared. He cries for the loss, and he cries for the guilt of leaving his wife and daughter in Wakanda. For the first time since the dusting he lets himself feel the pain he’s been suffocating under. When Steve comes by to ask if he’s ready he takes what’s left of the pain and adds it to the rage he’s been harbouring since he’d held his dying son in his arms.

“Yes,” he replies, “I’m ready.”

He doesn’t know how today will end, but he’s counting on it his son getting to come back and be seventeen.  

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. I had a Winnie the Pooh that size - my dad bought one for me when he came back from deployment after my second birthday, it had to sit on the front seat of his car because it didn't fit in his (admittedly very small trunk)  
> 2\. Morgan - she's not in all of my stories at this moment, but I'm writing a couple with her in them at the moment and thought that she fit into this pretty well. Let me know what you thought of her!  
> 3\. I had a SUPER painful major character death follow-up for 18, I didn't add it to this because I thought it was too mean, but let me know if you'd like it added on.


End file.
